EA's SimCity Viral Marketer Gets Banned From NeoGaf

Hey remember way back in 2012, we did an article about EA's viral marketing campaign and most people shrugged and said “what else is new?” well, you could consider this the poorly funded sequel that was made to cash in on the oh-so-poor reputation EA has brought upon itself.

Last year it was detailed how EA had paid a bunch of people to troll and self-congratulate games receiving bad press, and how they were offloading a lot of that work overseas to cut costs in their three-quarters of a billion dollar marketing department. Fast forward a year later and EA is back at it again, primed and ready to troll forum boards and community websites.

Electronic Arts continues to dig a grave that would make most undertakers envious, as one of their damage control viral marketers were outed and banned on NeoGaf for trying to downplay the SimCity mess and potentially influence a more positive outlook on the grade-A disasterpiece.

DSO Gaming spotted the post from the head honcho of NeoGaf who eventually stepped in after the paranoid folk on NeoGaf started investigating a user going by the conspicuously obvious name of GlassBox, which is the name of the game engine that Maxis' SimCity runs on.

Anyway, Polygon ran an interview with Lucy Bradshaw – who used the opportunity to desperately try to repair the damaged name of Maxis with the community – and the GlassBox viral marketer was quick to post the article on NeoGaf, which immediately caught the ire of NeoGaf members. After a little Dr. Who-style deduction, comment tracking, messaging and whatever else the folks at NeoGaf do to oust marketers, it became apparent that the anonymous GlassBox was an employee of Maxis or EA, which prompted NeoGaf owner to step in and state the following before dropping the banhammer...

“We welcome members of the video game industry posting anonymously on NeoGAF. Obviously, anything someone says on the internet attached to their name can have consequences. We welcome you posting openly, whether in an official capacity or otherwise. Or posting semi-openly, where some people may know who you are but your name’s not coming up in Google with everything you say. All of that’s fine.

What we don’t welcome is this kind of behavior: attempting to distort the news aggregate by posting apologetic articles and accompanying them with an editorial slant favoring your company, all without actually disclosing to anyone here that you work for the company in question.”

If this were a game, EA would have unlocked the platinum achievement for longest miles traveled on Fail Road.

On their way to work, both Peter Moore and John Ricitiello sometimes take a shortcut through Fail Road...it's where they get their best ideas. You can see how those ideas pan out with things like the SimCity launch.

Fun Fact: EA is the only company who goes out of their way to implore their employees to drive on Fail Road despite most employees disagreeing with that assessment.

If there happened to be a consumer-voted contest for the Worst Company in America I'm sure EA would ride Fail Road right to the top to become the worst in the country...oh wait, THEY DID!